One of the last survivors of the golden age of bebop – the 1950s – tenor saxophonist and composer Benny Golson died on Saturday, 21 September at home in Manhattan. He was 95 and had been ill for a short time. Best known in the jazz world as a composer and tenor soloist, Golson produced some of the most memorable songs that quickly became jazz standards.
Early in his career he played, recorded and toured with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and in 1958 made a considerable contribution to Moanin’ on Blue Note records, one of the band’s most successful albums. Four of the six compositions on that LP were written by Golson, including Blues March, Along Came Betty and The Drum Thunder Suite, the last a three-part feature for leader Art Blakey. Golson’s best-known pieces, though, were the titles that jazz soloists loved to play, such as Stablemates, I Remember Clifford (a tribute to his friend Clifford Brown who died in a car crash) and Killer Joe. Drummer Philly Joe Jones almost made Killer Joe his theme song.
The famous 1958 photograph A Great Day In Harlem, featuring 57 jazz musicians representing styles from traditional to modern, included Benny in its ranks. The picture inspired a feature film, The Terminal, starring Tom Hanks and directed by Steven Spielberg in 2004. The storyline is about a jazz enthusiast travelling from Europe to the USA to meet one of the last survivors of that photo shoot. Benny Golson played himself in a cameo role. At this time Golson was one of just seven survivors. Today, with Golson’s death, the only survivor is fellow tenor man Sonny Rollins.
Golson once told a Downbeat journalist that he had been fortunate. He said that he had had a desire to get into music not to become famous or to make money but to have his music played and please the people that heard it. He said “And it’s happened in great abundance, more than I had anticipated. It’s been good to me.”
Benny Golson played jazz tenor sax with an urgent, driving sound. After graduating from Howard University, he played initially with Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie. He spent time in a Bull Moose Jackson/Tadd Dameron combo which helped and inspired him to write jazz staples. Dameron told him that even the most advanced jazz of the time could be given melodic appeal. After a stint with the Messengers, he formed the Jazztet, a quintet he co-led with trumpeter Art Farmer. This band worked from 1959 to 1962. He once shared the bill at a club with the Ornette Coleman quartet but as Ornette was getting all the attention from press and punters at that time the jazztet was overlooked and received no coverage. In general, however, the group was successful and although they broke up in 1962 the band reformed for reunion concerts in the 1980s and 1990s until Farmer died in 1999.
Golson’s career as musician and composer was one of the longest and most successful in jazz. He was awarded many honours including NEA Jazz Master in 1996, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004 and honorary degrees from Berklee College of Music and Butler University.
After he won the new-star award for tenor saxophone from Downbeat in 1957, Golson’s career never faltered. Apart from being partly responsible for the huge success of Blakey’s Moanin’ LP, he wrote music for all four of trumpeter Lee Morgan’s early Blue Note albums. During the 1960s he absorbed some of the techniques of playing pioneered by John Coltrane and the two men became good friends. He once described Coltrane as “an inextinguishable example of spiritual nobility” and was greatly distressed by his death in 1967.
Benny Golson was married twice, the first ending in divorce. He married Bobbie Hurd, a ballet dancer, who survives him along with their daughter, Brielle.
Benny Golson, tenor saxophonist, composer and arranger, 25 January 1929 – 21 September 2024